Domain

Explanation

What duster?

• It’s Disaster … pronounced as Di-sa-ster
• Disaster has the dictionary meaning of:
• Large-scale, catastrophic damage or destruction of either environment or properties or lives or all

Large-scale?

• Surely, breaking a cup handle cannot be catastrophic … but if the cup is of sentimental value … people do feel loss
• However,
• Disasters are destruction of such massive level that almost people feel passion about it
• Emotion has the 2 aspects:

1. Direction of emotion: towards negativity (grief, hate, worry, fear) … or positivity (happiness, relief, love, courageous) – qualitative side
2. Magnitude of emotion: how much towards the emotional direction … varying from extreme negativity … towards neutral … to extreme positivity – quantitative aspect

• Contrary to popular belief, passion is not only a highly positive emotion … in fact, passion is an intense emotion … it is actually very high emotional magnitude
• Phenomena like disasters are so overwhelming in scope, depth & influence that almost all affected are passionate about … people feel deeply about …
• Although the direction is expected to be negative … what we can be certain is the emotional intensity or passion about its influence

Attributes of disasters?

• To know a person is to understand, feel & empathize … is to be aware of the personal attributes … such that the person can be modeled properly in order for empathy
• Apply this analogy to disasters, we see that …
• To understand a disaster is to know its attributes … its various aspects:

1. Underlying phenomenon, be it natural or artificial or both
2. Sources: the roots, the causes & the build-up
3. Initiation: the ignition that starts it all
4. Evolution: the propagation that leads it from one stage to another, destabilizing, damaging & destroying along the way
5. Consequence: the closure, ending & effects imposed onto the subjects of environment, society & people
6. Reactions: of the trio of environment, society & people … the repercussions on later developments … varying in the two aspects of … time (short-term, long-term) … & space (across spatial, cultural dimensions)

• Taken together, the 6 attributes of disasters would provide general insight

What tech-no-loji?

• Technology is made up of techno & logy
• Techno is the technical, intrinsic properties & organizational aspect
• Logy is the cultivated studies towards knowledge & usage
• Hence, taken together,
• Technology is the studies of technical issues, problems & challenges to produce knowledge & usage, in the forms of methodologies, tools & equipment
• Technological … that is, technology-related … either caused by technologies or people handling them or both
• We do always use tools to help us:

1. No useful tools: we fabricate them from nature or further process by ourselves
2. Tools available: we customize & shape them to meet our special needs … see the different colours, shapes, sizes & designs of toothbrushes

• Sophisticated tools are structures & machines of 2 aspects:

1. Assistance beyond individual capacity: help us in our tasks; each of us has our limits of say, strength, knowledge, communications, etc.; structures & machines can be built & operated to have strength far greater than any of us, go to depths further & more dangerous than is humanly possible, compute/design/analyse faster than most of us (but might not be accurate due to human modeling)
2. Relieve & release us for other tasks: we might have too many things; structures & machines can be built so well that they can take over things (normally, repetitive) that used to be done by people … like farming tools (tractors, harvesters), transport (vehicles) and communications (telephones, emails) … most people accept this as a good sign … as they are able to go about their tasks better with seemingly less worries, but might be breed complacency

• Technology has the following 6 phases:

1. Motivation: drive to use technology for issue
2. Design: model from concepts mixed with empirical experience
3. Development: fabrication
4. Usage: service use
5. Maintenance: maintain quality of service
6. Retirement: who says machines are different from people … we are all part of nature … & nature would age … yet rejuvenates in other forms … in the enclosed system of Earth

• Despite such attractive attributes of technology
• We need to be aware of its flip sides:

1. Segregated technology: the fact that technology is so attractive is its decoupling from the staunch reality … often full of issues, challenges, messy problems … some see technology as a liberating factor in humanity … the often highly-sung tune of the triumph of humanity over nature … yet when we look back … we discover the forces of nature & chance are overwhelming … when we look at technology … we discover the 6 phase of technology might & do often get mismanaged
2. In technology we trust: we are happy in that the technology can assist & relieve us in tasks, but we are negligent in ensuring the shaping & continuing technological usage … we place complete trust in technology because of its amazing powers … yet absolute trust corrupts absolutely … we build a dog … thinking it’s a dog … never mind taking care of it … yet placing ever more responsibilities on it … eventually when it does collapse … we blame that it is not doing its job … man, art thou awake?

What to do with technological disasters, then?

• All of us do not want accidents … yet accidents do occur … that’s why they are accidents … yet they are caused by people
• Vehicles do not mind people, but people must mind vehicles
• The same goes for disasters … however way we wish them away … they still come back to haunt us
• Is there something wrong with this world?
• That’s a question not for engineers
• The engineer does not question or blame the heavens or earth or nature
• The engineer focuses on the issues at hand, whether technological or human
• As technology comes from humans, and humans are increasingly being shaped & influenced by technology
• The interactions of technology and humans are the focus of engineers when dealing with technological disasters – to deal with only technology, the human factor would be neglected; to deal with human, the technology factor would be ignored
• Yet the complexity, scope, depth, difficulties & larger-than-life requirements of resources would deter even the most staunch engineers amongst us
• Is there no rescue?
• The answer lies in the approach towards disaster management
• The three-prong approach for technological disaster management:

1. Disaster effects mitigation: emergency & protection measures & habits
2. Prevention: assessment, detection, social responsibility
3. Anticipation: if anticipated before occurrence, why & how disaster still happens? … if not anticipated before occurrence, what can done in future?

• These can be also inferred from defense, forensics & law

The approach taken herein …

• W.r.t. technological disasters, develop array of strategies to help prevention
• Anticipated:

1. Less technology factor, more human influence
2. Value judgments, parties involved, organisational structure, communication inadequacies
3. Risk evaluation procedures needed
4. How lessons can be applied

• Unanticipated:

1. More technology factor, less human influence
2. What design flaws, human errors & risk assessment flaws
3. Provisions for crisis training
4. Building in fail-safe mechanisms?: neglect again
5. Preparing & implementing well-though-out emergency plans to meet hazardous & unexpected developments

• How to design technology to enhance human life?
• How to live with technology that we create?
• How to mind the machines, instead believing that they would care anything about us?

13 Disaster Cases …

• USS Princeton Explosion
• Titanic sinking
• Aisgill Train Wreck
• Johnstown flood
• DC-10 Crash
• Tenerife runway collision
• Santa Barbara oil spill
• Love canal toxic wast contamination
• Apollo I fire
• Three Mile Island
• Chernobyl catastrophe
• Challenger shuttle disaster
• Bhopal poison gas release
• Columbia shuttle disintegration

Theories of disasters …

• Technological disasters are failures of the complex interrelated sociotechnical systems - of both machines & people
• Sociotechnical systems can go wrong in the following aspects:

1. Technical: systems, processes or materials failures, malfunctions
2. Stakeholders: designers, operators, social, economical, political conflicts of interests, distractions & mismanagement
3. Interactions: complex, inter-relations, coupling, modeling & phenomena

• For a sociotechnical system is go so wrong to the extent of a disasters would require either the thorough failure of the technical subsystem or stakeholders subsystem
• Even if each of the two subsystems are working well independently, they must work well & cohesively together
• Many disasters occur due to the third aspect: willful interactions of sound independent technical & stakeholders subsystems
• Yet,
• Since sociotechnical systems are socially constructed,
• They can be designed & redesigned to minimise the probability of technological disaster through Theories of ReSearch
• Through understanding the disaster from a closed-systems analysis
• Note the 3 categories of systems (Perrow's theory of Normal Accidents, 1984):

1. Risks > Benefits: abandon systems
2. Systems should be made less risky
3. Systems that are self-correcting, stable & can be further improved

Root causes of disasters …

• With the parameters of (technological subsystem, stakeholders subsystems) & (internal coupling, external coupling):

1. Technical design factors
2. Human factors factors
3. Organisational systems factors
4. Socio-cultural system factors

Advice

• Strategic responses needed for vigilant prevention & mitigation
• Niches of the relevant components:

1. Engineers & Scientists
2. Corporations in the management of disasters
3. Legal system in technology policy decisions
4. Risk assessments
5. Technology decisions

• On the road towards Recovery